Well as a long time atheist who has only really been thinking at all deeply about it for the past few years (must be an age thing) then I can confirm that I have learned about humanism in these last few years and tend to agree with most things humanist.

Then again getting atheists to agree to most things is like herding cats.

I guess so Peter. IIRC there was a survey done about thirty years ago which found a third of people in the Republic would not let an atheist into their homes. When I first went there in the mid-1970s, the place was far too close to being a theocracy for comfort.

However, my understanding is that people in the Republic nowadays are much more tolerant about religion than they were. Mary Kenny's book "Goodbye Catholic Ireland", published about a decade ago, showed that the dominance of the Catholic Church was on its way out.

Strangely, I hear that the Church of Ireland is the fastest growing church in the South. Any reason for that, Peter? It's basically low Anglican than Anglo-Catholic.

Peter -- it was a joke! You said "most people are probably agnostics....even within the church"; I said "I just don't know about that [=I'm agnostic about that]. Like "Heisenberg was probably right," or "75% of all statistics are just invented." But I like your trumpet story -- if an urban legend it's a good one.
PMJH

At 05:21 PM 5/14/2007, you wrote:

Quote:I just don't know about that. PMJH

He was speaking from experience Peter, as far as I can remember. At the time he was one of the Methodist Church's leading evangelists (late sixties/early seventies). I think what he was getting at was that a lot of people who go to church are merely "nominal Christians", even in so -called evangelical circles. I think it proves a point though. It's probably the same on the other side of the coin. Many who label themselves as Atheist, in reality, are probably agnostic.

Peter Henderson wrote:Many who label themselves as Atheist, in reality, are probably agnostic.

I would have thought in Great Britain at least it would be more likely to be the other way around. I would suspect that many people who are actually atheists describe themselves publicy as agnostic to avoid any kind of fuss, confrontation etc. While I certainly don't think it isn't respectable to be an atheist most people are too apathetic to want to be an assumed Dawkins style anti-theist by the general public.

In a Churches Conservation Trust booklet, I came across this quote from the funeral sermon for Sir George St Paul, who died in 1613.
“Neither was he void of compassion in the execution of Justice. No, not when he dealt with Papists, or hard-hearted Atheists”.